Johnny Blanchard, dead at 76

ROBBINSDALE, Minn., March 25 (UPI) -- Johnny Blanchard, who played eight seasons in the major leagues and appeared in five World Series, died Wednesday at the age of 76.

Blanchard died of a heart attack, St. Paul Pioneer-Press columnist Charley Waters reported.

Blanchard played for the New York Yankees in 1955 and from 1959-65. He split his final major-league season between the Yankees, Kansas City Athletics and Milwaukee Braves.

He was with the Yankees in their heyday, appearing in the World Series each season from 1960-64. New York won two of those World Series, including in 1961 when Blanchard hit .400 overall and two home runs against the Cincinnati Reds.

Waters described Blanchard as a close friend of Yankees great Mickey Mantle.

Blanchard appeared in 516 games over his career, mostly as either an outfielder or catcher. He hit .239 with 67 home runs.

The Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis said Blanchard was a three-sport star at Minneapolis Center High School, playing basketball and football in addition to baseball.
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On July 21,1961, Johnny B hammered a ninth inning, two out, pinch hit grand slam home run at Fenway Park to push the Yanks to an 11-8 victory over the Red Sox. The next day Blanchard hit another ninth inning, pinch hit homer to spark a second come-from- behind victory over Boston.

On July 26, the man they called "Super- Sub" slashed his third and fourth home runs at Yankee Stadium against the Chicago White Sox. The homers drove in four runs as the Yanks beat the White Sox, 5-2.

Four straight homers over three games tied a major league record

Talk to Barack

techPresident


Want to help our President rid the Republic of the evil forces of greed and corruption? He needs your help, and now's your chance! Just click 'techPresident' and get going!

"We're going to try something a little different," says President Obama in a new video released tonight. "We're going to take advantage of the Internet to bring all of you to the White House to talk about the economy." And with that, the new administration inaugurated the West Wing edition of Open for Questions, the experiment in giving citizens a direct line to the Oval Office that the transition team first ran during the Change.gov days.

As Micah mentioned below, Open for Questions signals that the Obama Administration is taking seriously its stated commitment to running a participatory and wired White House. OFQ was announced in a blog post posted just an hour or so before Obama's traditional press conference before Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper, and the rest of the the White House press corps tonight. On Thursday, the president will take time to participate in "a special online town hall." The event will be live streamed on WhiteHouse.gov, and he'll answer "some of the most popular questions." (That's wording, of course, that gives the Administration a good deal of wiggle room in deciding which questions to address).

That's not a great deal of time, and might be one way of managing the influx of questions. A little over an hour after the feature went live, about 1,150 people have submitted 815 questions and cast 22,500 votes. [UPDATE: Some new numbers -- as of 8:40pm ET, approximately 2,400 people have submitted 2,200 questions and have cast 59,500 votes.] Like the Change.gov version, this new Open for Questions is powered by Google Moderator.

During Blackberry-gate, we spent much time talking about how his trusty PDA might help keep the new president from being trapped in a hermetically-sealed White House bubble. Obama stills seems eager not to let that happen. "This is an experiment," he said, in announcing OFQ. "But it's also an exciting opportunity for me to look at a computer and get a snapshot of what Americans across the country care about...This way, I can get a sense of your concerns, and give you some straight answers."

He wrapped by issuing a bit of a challenge: "So, America, what do you want to know about the economy? Just go to whitehouse.gov and ask me."

UPDATE: Our Andrew Rasiej offers a comment: "This represents further proof that the new media team at the White House is determined to bring the White House on par with the web as we know it today and fulfill the President's promise for a more transparent and responsive government."

The Quest for the Perfect Coffee Mug

Mug finalists



A perfect cup of coffee is about as easy to create as a perfect circle, and obtaining the correct coffee (Sumatran)and other ingredients (half and half, two sugars) is just the beginning. From there one needs the perfect brewer (a wide range of acceptables here, but a French Press is really the best)and, perhaps most importantly, the correct receptacle. What, you may ask, makes the perfect receptacle? Ah, grasshopper... read on!

1. more capacity than a wimpy teacup
2. decidedly hefty
3. durable -- fearlessly immune to sink 'accidents'
4. Signature -- it should be one-of-a-kind, a standout in the kitchen cabinet.

After years of painstaking trial and error, the attached hero emerges.

We're re-arranging deck chairs again!

Lemme see...2/3rds of the world is still starving, there's an ongoing AIDS epidemic on two continents, North Korea is about to test an ICBM, the world economy is in turmoil, the planet itself is in a state of high detrimental-to-humans activity, Iran is probably two internet hacks away from nuclear capability, and the legislative body of the most powerful, most influential government ever is spending its time grousing over one percent of one corporation's stimulus package. Are we CRAZY?

From the NY Times:
In House, Anger Over A.I.G. Bonuses Turns Partisan
March 19, 2009
WASHINGTON � Democrats and Republicans tried to outdo one another in voicing anger and indignation on Thursday as the House debated a bill to punish executives of the American International Group who got big bonuses while the federal government was bailing out their foundering company.

�The people have said �no,� � Representative Earl Pomeroy, Democrat of North Dakota, shouted on the House floor. �In fact, they said �hell no, and give us our money back.� �

�Have the recipients of these checks no shame at all?� Mr. Pomeroy continued. Summing up his personal view of the so-far anonymous A.I.G. executives, he said: �You are disgraces, professional losers. And by the way, give us our money back.�

Republicans were not to be outdone in expressing disgust, and they had a collective �I told you so� message for Democrats. Representative Ed Royce of California, for instance, said he would vote for the bill on the floor, but he proudly recalled that last fall he had voted against the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the bailout plan that is the source of mounting public fury.

Other Republicans signaled that they would vote �no� and would line up instead behind a countermeasure that Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the minority leader, said would recover the taxpayers� money much faster.

Representative Judy Biggert, Republican of Illinois, said that while virtually everyone agrees that the A.I.G. executives should not be getting bonuses for failing, it would be a mistake for the House to rush through a piece of legislation. If that happened, she said, there could be regrets later, as there are now over the TARP bill, �made public in the dead of night, just hours before the vote.�

The bill being debated on Thursday, which would need a two-thirds majority vote to pass because it was being considered under a suspension of House rules, was offered by Representative Charles B. Rangel, the New York Democrat who heads the House Ways and Means Committee. It would take 90 percent of the A.I.G. bonuses back in federal taxes. It would apply to bonuses paid since Jan. 1 by A.I.G. or any other company accepting more than $5 billion in bailout money.

�This is not going to happen again,� Mr. Rangel said. �The light is flashing and letting them know that America won�t take it.�

But Mr. Boehner was disdainful of Mr. Rangel�s proposal, calling it �a sham� and urging adoption of a bill to get back the bonus money at once. The $165 million in bonuses has spawned rage in part because it was paid to executives in the very unit of A.I.G. that arguably turned a stable, prosperous insurance company into a dice-rolling financial firm in search of quick profits.

The Democrats have a 254-to-178 advantage in the House. Assuming that every member votes, 288 �yes� votes would be required to pass either Mr. Rangel�s or Mr. Boehner�s proposal.

The Republicans said their measure would get back all of the bonus money, not just most of it.

And they said it would do so within two weeks, as opposed to the year or so that the Democrats� bill would take � assuming, that is, that the A.I.G. executives filed honest tax returns.What�s more, Republicans asserted, the Democrats are mostly responsible for the A.I.G. bonus debacle, since Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, inserted language in President Obama�s economic stimulus package � not to be confused with the TARP legislation, passed in the waning days of the Bush administration, by the old Congress � to exempt bonuses granted by contract before Feb. 11 from general restrictions on bonus payments.

Mr. Dodd has said the Treasury Department insisted on the exemption in final negotiations on the stimulus legislation. Republicans have been calling the provision a �dark of night� or �dead of night� deed, as Ms. Biggert did. Some Republicans have also been offering reminders that not one of them in the House voted for President Obama�s stimulus program.

Of course, it is not uncommon for complicated legislation to go through Congress with sections that escape detailed initial scrutiny. And when the lawmakers considered President Obama�s economic stimulus package they no doubt recalled that, on the day last fall when the TARP legislation initially stalled in the House, the stock market plunged.

While the House was debating, Sheila Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, was testifying before Senator Dodd�s banking panel. She told the senators that the idea of bailing out institutions considered �too big to fail� was unsatisfactory.

Mr. Dodd agreed. One lesson to glean from the current crisis, he said, is that �no institution should ever be �too big to fail.� �